Locke and Action at a Distance (with an afterthought on Hume & Reid)

I start losing my grip on the distinction between being a source of change and a mere transmitter of change when the change isn’t just local motion....Locke does come to think that attraction may be real, not reducible to the transmission of motion, and not the direct exercise of divine will.  That would make attraction an active power that is not will.  So I wish I’d hedged my claims a bit more, and said that the only active power we have a clear idea of, and the only active power we are sure there is, is will..--Antonia LoLordo

My favorite early modern blog, the Mod Squad, is hosting a week long 'author meets critics' on LoLordo's Locke’s Moral Man. The first exchange between Sam Rickless and Lolordo is terrific. Lolordo's remark above caught my Newton-obsessed attention.

At one point in the 18th century (in the French Enlightenment), Locke and Newton became increasingly interpreted as having a unified philosophy (with the division of labor: Newton physics, Locke epistemology & metaphysics). But sophisticated scholarship (Howard Stein and Lisa Downing come to mind) on both Newton and Locke during the last few decades has emphasized non-trivial differences. Yet, above, Lolordo interprets Locke on gravity in such a way that Locke and Newton appear to agree on action at a distance. That is, attraction really exists, and may be the consequence of an unknown quality of matter (either super-added to matter, or an extrinsic or relational quality of matter), and, thus, we need not have a clear idea of either the cause or mechanism by which attraction operates.  (For more on my -- controversial -- views on Newtonian action at a distance, recall this.) Of course, this does not mean that Locke or Newton can or wishes to rule out direct divine-action, an aether, or divine super-addition.

Now, we tend to think that the way of ideas found its demise by way of the sceptical reductio in Hume's hands. Then Reid restored sanity, by giving up on ideas as a crucial epistemic (or even mental?) category. But, perhaps, the more decisive shift occurred already in Locke's admission that there may be active powers of which we do not have a clear idea yet whose existence we are forced to accept because of the methods of mathematical-empirical natural philosophy? Then ideational clarity and distinctness need not be a touchstone anymore. If this (speculative) paragraph is correct, then Newton's Challenge was first felt by Locke.